Toto Wolff has said Mercedes have no chance of winning Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix and that Red Bull are in a league of their own.
Both Mercedes drivers, George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, struggled during the two practice sessions on Friday as Max Verstappen topped the times.
Hamilton complained of brake issues and his DRS was malfunctioning, while Russell said the car had struggled in the gusty conditions and lost a piece of his floor during the opening hour practice.
Asked if Mercedes could be in the mix for winning the season-opening race, Wolff said: “As it stands… no. Red Bull are in a league of their own. Purely based on the assumptions that we’ve seen in terms of pace, I don’t think that we can match the leader’s performance.”
On paper, Mercedes look likely to struggle at the opening few races of the season but Wolff, who admitted to being surprised by the apparent lack of pace, said the dominant team of recent years in Formula 1 would hit back in the title fight.
“We’ve won eight constructors in a row so this team has done well in the past,” he said. “We’re not always had the easiest of times. Last year, we felt that we started much worse off and took it all the way to the last race.
“If it is the case that we’re on the back foot, we all know we’ve done it before. It’s a challenging situation but we need to see the positives.
“There’s simple solutions to get the performance back. There’s 23 races. Even if we lose a race or two…nobody is protected against DNFs or crashes. We’ve seen last year they played a big role. We’ll give it all we can and bring updates.”
